


The Beach

by DwarvenBeardSpores



Category: Shaun the Sheep (Cartoon)
Genre: Beaches, Chaos, Gen, Humor, Pirates, Surfing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 17:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12687084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenBeardSpores/pseuds/DwarvenBeardSpores
Summary: The Farmer takes his flock to the beach. Bitzer is the only one who sees what a bad idea this is.





	The Beach

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was written for my bro, who wanted a story with Shaun and the gang in a totally new location. It was really fun to write, and I'm posting it here with his permission.

Bitzer was never one to question the Farmer’s ideas. He took those ideas and made sure they turned out alright; that was the way things worked. Usually, the Farmer’s plans were great, absolutely inspired, and Bitzer was proud to be involved.

Today's was... a little less than inspired. The Farmer, after grumbling about the summer heat and muttering about the past, had packed his sheep up in a trailer, let Bitzer scramble through the passenger-side window, and driven to a b _each_.

That's what he had called it as they drove up. "Welcome to the beach!" he had said, and Bitzer had pressed his nose to the window and stared. It was so different from the farm. The dirt was different, and the sky was different, and there were more people than animals, and there was an impossible amount of water.

Bitzer’s immediate job was to make sure the place was safe, and he bolted out of the car to explore. Before the Farmer had even loaded the bleating flock out of the trailer, he’d discovered that the ground was weird and unstable and his paws slipped in it, and that there were bones and bits of plastic buried everywhere. As the sheep stumbled across the treacherous terrain, Bitzer investigated the water, which was both larger and more powerful than anything he'd encountered before. It tasted awful.

Surely the Farmer couldn't have come to this beach on purpose!

Bitzer bolted back to the truck, barking an alarm. The Farmer had to understand that something was wrong, and fix it. Or maybe Shaun would take his warnings to heart and keep the rest of the sheep from venturing too far into this strange and unknown place.

Halfway through his warning, Bitzer was trampled by a stampede of overeager sheep.

He pulled himself out of the ground and looked around. The sheep-- clearly visible at least, and very obvious on the flat terrain-- had scattered. Bitzer yelped and dashed forward, all of his herding instincts kicking in.

Timmy's Mom veered to the left, he deftly changed her course. Timmy headed for the water, Bitzer yipped until he moved away. Shaun charged towards the people to the right... Bitzer stopped _that_ in its tracks. The sheep, somewhat disoriented, clumped together under Bitzer's expert guidance. They all looked toward the Farmer, waiting for him to decide that it was all a mistake and they would go somewhere less strange and dangerous.

The Farmer had been setting up a blanket on the ground, looking very pleased with himself. He glanced at the perfectly ordered sheep, surprised at how excellently Bitzer had rounded them up. Bitzer wagged his tail, waiting for the inevitable praise.

"Eh," the Farmer said, and dismissed the sheep with a wave of his hand. They scattered. Bitzer couldn't believe it!

After that, there was no controlling the flock. They charged at the ice cream stand, and the dunes, and the beachgoers. People screamed as they were trampled by sheep. (Bitzer could relate.) Someone-- it looked like Timmy's Mom-- turned on a boom box that blasted surf music. Shaun started handing out sunglasses to the other sheep, and Bitzer wasn't sure where he'd found them.

It was chaos.

The Farmer didn't seem to care. He propped an umbrella next to his blanket and slathered some strange-smelling goop on his shoulders with a self-satisfied grin. This left Bitzer with two choices. He could spend his time on a futile attempt to protect the sheep from themselves (yet again), or he could sit down and relax next to the Farmer, and prove that he would go along with whatever plan-- however absurd-- his master came up with.

He rummaged in the back of the truck until he found a blanket of his own, a bit ratty and covered in crumbs, and proudly began laying it out next to the Farmer's. This, he was quite certain, was what a Good Dog should do. He-

-blinked and suddenly found himself being dragged along the beach, Shaun holding tight to one of his paws and running like a bull. Bitzer yelped and swallowed a mouthful of sand. He stared back at the Farmer, but the Farmer only waved and told him to have fun.

Shaun was relentlessly excited. He brought Bitzer right up to the water and showed off everything that was going on. Timmy's Mom was still grooving to music. Timmy was laying shells and bits of paper on dozing sunbathers, so that they'd tan in strange patterns. Shirley kept going up to the ice cream stand in different disguises, and the bored teenager at the counter had yet to catch on.

A few of the sheep were still milling around, overwhelmed, so Shaun dared them to drink the disgustingly salty water. Shaun was kind of a jerk like that. He bleated with laughter at every horrified sheep that fell for his plan (it was a lot of them).

Bitzer glared. He was about to start telling Shaun off for not following sheep health procedures, and for being kind of a jerk, but then Shaun convinced a human child to drink the water too, and she screamed, and okay, _that_ was funny. And Bitzer might have told Shaun to do it again. Child health, after all, was not his responsibility.

However, hilarious pranks aside, Bitzer could see that the beach was still trouble. The sheep were all being irresponsible, and getting covered in sand and ice cream, and with all that water, what if one of them decided to go swimming and floated away?

"HELP!" cried Nuts, who had decided to go swimming and was floating away. In all the confusion, Bitzer hadn't even noticed him going into the water, but now he was flailing around much too far from shore.

Shaun and Bitzer shared a look. They were thinking the same thing. Shaun might've been kind of a jerk, but he cared about protecting the flock as much as Bitzer did. Both of them knew exactly what needed to be done.

"I'm coming!" Bitzer barked, and jumped into the water.

"Surf Brigade!" Shaun shouted, and ran further inland.

Bitzer swam with all his might, determined to get to Nuts before he sank. Nuts was bleating frantically, probably weighed down by all that wool. But it would be okay. Bitzer and Shaun would get there and---

_Surf Brigade?_

Despite his hurry, Bitzer stopped short. What on earth was a _surf brigade?_

Just then, all the rest of the flock paddled past. They were crouched on bright oval-ish boards and regular boards and inflatable rings. Timmy's Mom still had the boombox. Bitzer yelped in bewilderment. Shaun turned to him, raised his sunglasses smugly, and said "it's gnarly, dude."

The sheep splashed over to Nuts, and hauled him on the back of what Shaun called his _surfboard_. Nuts was very bedraggled. "Now we catch a wave back," Shaun proclaimed, standing upright and stepping to the front of the board, so his hooves hung off the edge. The other sheep followed suit, except for Nuts who was too soggy.

"Cowabunga!" Shaun shouted.

The surfboards bobbed calmly on the water.

Behind the flock, the rest of the ocean was flat and still. There was barely enough breeze to cause a ripple on the water, and the waves coming in had spread into nothingness by the time they reached the sheep. There was no chance any of them would push the boards back to shore.

The sheep looked ridiculous.

Bitzer howled with laughter. Shaun glared. Bitzer kept laughing until he swallowed water by accident, then he hacked and coughed and paddled over to Timmy's custom flame-patterned surfboard to catch his breath.

From there, he realized a new problem.

Not only was the ocean not pushing the sheep back towards the beach, it was actually pulling them farther out.

The Farmer was now a tiny shape in the distance, rapidly growing smaller. He looked like he was taking a nap. The child that Shaun had convinced to drink salt water pointed at them and laughed. Bitzer looked around for something to wave as a distress signal, but the only thing nearby was Timmy.

Timmy was not happy to be waved around like a distress signal. He screamed, and Bitzer put him down. No one on the beach seemed to care. Bitzer had to think of a plan. _He_ could make it back to shore, but the sheep were not built for swimming. And in the time it would take Bitzer to get someone's attention, they'd probably have been pulled even further out to sea. Then they'd be lost forever! So, like it or not, Bitzer was going down with his flock. He only hoped the Farmer wouldn't be too mad at him.

As Bitzer was contemplating this, shedding a tear for the lovely farm-life that he was leaving behind, the sheep started bleating very loudly. Bitzer composed himself and turned around to comfort them... only to realize they weren't bleating in despair. They were actually very impressed by the large boat that was drawing up behind them.

It was almost twice as tall as Shirley on a surfboard, and looked as though it had been patched together dozens of times with whatever materials were on hand. Wood, gum, plastic bottles, and was that... to his horror, Bitzer noticed bits of a wool sweater shoved between a plastic shovel and half a tire. A giant mast stuck out of the middle of the ship, a tattered pair of underwear flying from it like a flag.

As they stared, amazed, long ropes flew from the top of the ship and wrapped around each sheep. No sooner had the loops been secured when the sheep were yanked up and onto the ship. Timmy went first, then Nuts. Timmy's mom and her boom box went next, then Shirley (with some difficulty). Bitzer and Shaun were the last two left, but soon they were hauled on deck as well.

"Baah," said Shaun, distressed at the loss of his surfboard.

"Oof," said Bitzer, as he was dumped on the deck of the ship. He opened his eyes to look around... only to find himself face to tiny sneering face with a rat!

He yelped. The rat laughed. Bitzer scrambled back, only to find that he’d been tied to the mast. Around him, the flock was suffering the same fate. They were surrounded by dozens of rats, all bearing scars, eyepatches, striped shirts, and gold teeth. Pirate rats.

Pi-rats.

The pi-rats muttered and hissed as they swarmed over and around the trapped flock. They picked at each sheep’s wool, and tried to yank Bitzer’s collar off his neck. They talked amongst themselves about eating the sheep, or trading them to the seagulls for leftover hamburgers.

But at least now Bitzer had something to fight against that wasn’t the vast expanse of an ocean. He growled and snapped at the pi-rats when they got too close. His paws were free, somehow, so he tried to swat at them too, knock them off board. There were too many to contend with, but Bitzer got in some solid blows.

Shaun, though, was making a plan. He was moving ropes around, tying and untying the knots to suit his purposes. (The pi-rats, it seemed, only had a loose idea of what “tying people up” meant.) Once he was satisfied, he leaned in close to Bitzer’s ear and whispered that, on his signal, he needed Bitzer to climb the mast.

Bitzer refused.

Shaun insisted.

Bitzer refused again.

Shaun said “it’s to save the flock,” and that was that.

Then Shaun whispered to Timmy, who nodded and started crying and gesturing for the boom box, tucked in a corner and forgotten. It had been shut off in the struggle. The rats looked between Timmy and the boom box. “That must be valuable,” one of the rats muttered.

“Very valuable, mmhmmm,” another rat agreed. It scrambled over to the boom box and and fiddled with it, trying to figure out what it did.

Shaun nudged Nuts who, in his best approximation of a rat voice, said “maybe turn that big knob all the way to the left!” He sounded nothing like a rat, but it seemed to work. The pi-rat turned the big knob all the way to the left, and without warning, the air was filled with blaring surf music.

“Now!” Shaun said to Bitzer, and, ignoring both his fear of heights and the really REALLY loud bass line, Bitzer leapt at the mast. Below him rats ran this way and that, unsure what to do with this assault on their ears. His claws dug into the soft, smooth wood, and he was able to inch himself upwards in a way that sheep, with their clumsy hooves, wouldn’t have been able to manage. (It made him feel important.) About halfway up he realized that one of the ropes was tied around his waist for some reason. By the time he got all the way to the top, he realized that he had no idea how to get down. The pi-rats had figured out how to turn the music off and were starting to swarm around the sheep again.

“Get on the other side of the flagpole!” Shaun called.

Bitzer did so, avoiding the mildewed underwear as much as possible.

“Jump!” Shaun called to Bitzer, holding out his arms.

Bitzer refused.

Shaun rolled his eyes and said “the flock needs you!”

So Bitzer closed his eyes and jumped. Air hurtled past his ears, he felt the rope around his waist tighten as though something on the other end was being lifted. He completely missed Shaun and crashed into the deck, which cracked underneath him.

“Sorry,” Shaun said. “But hey, it worked!”  
  
“What worked?” Bitzer asked. He looked up to see that his momentum and the rope around his waist had been used to hoist Shirley up the flagpole. Now Shirley was coming down the flagpole. Very very fast.

 _“HEE”_ Shirley said, right before crashing through the deck, splintering the pi-rats’ slapdash job into pieces. The rats scrambled, leaping onto bits of debris. The sheep scrambled too, and then Bitzer was underwater.

He wasn’t entirely sure what happened. There were a lot of bubbles and splashing and underwater bleating. He had the brief thought that _the sheep_ still _can’t float!_ before Shaun was hauling him out of the water.

“Cowabunga!” Shaun said. Bitzer spat out water and took in the situation.

Not only had Shirley’s flying leap totally destroyed the pi-rat ship, it had caused a huge wave in the water. Somehow Shaun had worked quickly enough to take advantage of this (Bitzer had no idea how it was possible!) and he and the rest of the sheep were now surfing, _actually_ surfing, back to shore!

They were all accounted for. Bitzer counted twice.

Timmy’s mom started the music again, and they triumphantly rode the waves all the way back to shore.

Shaun cheered when they touched land. Bitzer kissed the ground, which was sandy and disgusting. The sheep bleated and frolicked. The Farmer looked up sleepily and told them to quiet down.

Bitzer knew that was not going to happen.

But at least Bitzer could go back to his blanket and relax. The sheep were not about to set foot back in the water. They had plenty to do, like building sandcastles, harassing the nacho vendor, and splashing sunbathers. Also, the Farmer, who was having a very nice time, patted Bitzer’s head and told him he was a good boy.

So, stress and danger aside, Bitzer felt pretty happy with the way the beach trip had turned out.

(Until they got home, and realized that each sheep’s wool was horribly matted with sand.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> I'd love to know what you thought. 
> 
> I can also be found on tumblr as dwarven-beard-spores.


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